More Musings from Malawi

So yes, long time no speak. The problem when you write a “day in the life of….” blog is that it kind of pre-empts all future blogs that involve any sort of daily news. So I guess I was waiting for something pretty momentous to happen before I reported it, and nothing major really did, but that made me realise that maybe there were other day to day interactions and things I’ve been learning out here that didn’t really fall into that category but that people might a wee bittie find interesting.

But yes, with regard to work news, I think the Day in the Life of pretty much summarised it. If you multiply it by the 150 or so working days I’ve done in Mulanje that’s pretty much it – inching forward day by day. I would like to add at this juncture, however, that I AM NOT just linking schools out here. I am discovering, to my horror that lots of people think that that is what my job is out here, which would be a monumental waste of everyone’s time. In fact we are delivering a range of management training to primary schools, and supporting the district in their planning processes and school support….Just like to set the record straight on that one!

With regard to a collection of other observations and interactions please see the ditties below.

Welcome to Mulanje

“Welcome to Mulanje” my neighbour greeted to Pennie, our new staff member transferring from Dedza to Mulanje. “Home of fruits…” she paused and lowered her voice “…and juju”. There was an unmistakable look of pure mischief in her eyes. Juju is the universally understood term for witchcraft in east Africa and beyond.

Now I know I’ve talked about witchcraft before but even after 8 months I still don’t get it. This marks a cultural gulf that I’ll never bridge. Because Pennie got it straight away. Her eyes also widened as they prepared to swap tales of debauchery, with the attendant moral outrage.

Like the stories surrounding Mount Mulanje. Mount Mulanje is pretty much the most impressive and awe-inspiring mountain you will ever see. It has everything – drama, beauty, excitement and, as I’ve realised, its own microclimate. But above all the drama. The sides of the mountain are so steep it defies belief. If you don’t believe me (which is, I suppose, what it means to defy belief) then check out Google Earth. And if you aren’t the type to get onto Google Earth then think of any photo of Table Mountain, Cape Town that you’ve seen and double the scale. Seriously, double. I still have an intake of breath every morning when it comes into view on my way to work.

So I can imagine there would be a lot of tales and mythology surrounding such a mountain. Hell, Alex and I discuss what ‘mood’ the mountain is in most mornings, in rather deferential tones. I also hear there are people living up on the mountain – rastas who drum, Christians who pray. But the story I heard the other day didn’t quite seem to fit the picture.

Gerald, our finance guy in Dedza, used to live and work in Lujeri tea estate in Mulanje, which is quite close to my home. One day when I asked him if he had been up the mountain his eyes hinted at fear as he shook his head. He proceeded to tell me the story of the bananas.

“You know, if you go up that mountain and get to the very top, it is said that you will find a big big mountain of bananas. And once you see those bananas you must eat the whole heap. You cannot ask your friend to join you [it is important to share food in Malawian culture] but you must eat all the bananas yourself.”

“And so what happens if you don’t?”

“If you don’t eat all the bananas then you will disappear”.

The story was told in all seriousness (and in much more superfluous detail) and not without worry on the part of the storyteller for repeating it.

Now this story confuses me to this day. Fairy tales, myths and legends in Europe always seemed quite straightforward. There was good and bad, right and wrong, heroes and villains, winners and losers. But this story wasn’t so clear-cut. Is it a necessarily malevolent spirit that conveniently provides bananas after climbing a mountain? Or is perhaps the malevolence in that one guy can only watch with, presumably, quite an appetite on after 10,000ft. But then who is judging who has to eat the bananas – is it who saw them first? What if the 2 climbers aren’t sure who initially spotted them? And who would benefit from the consumption of so many bananas? It would seem that most bad spirits that I am familiar with generally have something to gain from the plots that they hatch. And of course the whole thing is topped off by the imagery of the most comedy of all fruits – the banana. No matter how hard I’ve tried I can’t be freaked out by this story, and give it the reverie it supposedly deserves.

Slightly more freaky, however, are the baby eating stories. Apparently there are some tales that my neighbour, a big boss at Lujeri tea estate, has been known to eat babies. Now I KNOW that isn’t true – it’s nsima maize porridge 3 times a day for him or nothing. But apparently us white people are prone to eating the odd baby ourselves. Now I can’t speak for any other azungu in the neighbourhood because I don’t really know many of them but I know that’s definitely not true on my part. But at least I get this story – harming children is pretty much the worst mud you can sling. And I also see why rich visitors or people from out of town would be targets for this kind of slander.

My neighbour’s wife Barbara is really the bridge for me between my relatively privileged life in a house on a hill in Mulanje and the reality of village life in Malawi. Barbara has had to make somewhat of a transition herself from the town life of her prosperous family and upbringing to life in a more rural setting. She feels the loneliness of losing peers and friends of a similar mindset, and the pressure to adapt her behaviour and attitudes to fit in locally. The 60km from Blantyre to Mulanje does not really do justice to the gulf of opportunity, education and standards of living, and in some ways for Barbara it feels like another world entirely.

I had a good chat with Barbara on the subject of witchcraft just the other week.

“Why do you always ask me about witchcraft” she smiles, warily.

I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps it’s fascinating because we don’t really have an equivalent in our day to day lives in the UK. Superstition of course, but not deep-set beliefs in the occult that cross-cut class, race or tribe, age and education levels. In fact I’m not sure we have any beliefs at all that are so widely accepted in the UK. Any answers?

Satisfied, at least, that I’m not mocking, Barbara proceeds to give me a bit of background on the relatively recent resurgence in witchcraft beliefs and practices. She talks about the influx in the 1970s of a large Chinese population in Malawi (who, like the Indian population, tend to be economically very successful), which seemed to spark stories around child eating. She’s not sure of the exact context, but thinks these stories jumped the racial divide to include white Europeans, and talks of literal ignorance in rural areas with regard to seeing and interacting with foreigners of different skin colours and the root of such myths. With regard to her husband Sam the stories are linked to his travelling late at night, which is always associated with illegitimate or repugnant behaviour.

Barbara also explains of a marked change from the view of witchcraft as a hereditary set of practices (and therefore relatively confined) to the proactive spreading of witchcraft behaviour by its proponents, preying on vulnerable members of society. True to say a newcomer like me is struck by the litany of witchcraft stories in the national press. It’s truly front-page material; a national obsession.

Barbara reminds me of a recent story at the local mission hospital. When I was admitted there in May an older Malawian woman came into my private room uninvited and insisted on praying for my soul incredibly loudly and at length, gesticulating wildly. I was unimpressed at her timing and put my head under my pillow until she went away.

Imagine my surprise to hear this woman had been arrested recently at the centre of a witchcraft training scandal based at the nursery she ran at the mission. By all accounts some children at the nursery began to reveal stories that they were being taken out of their homes at night by the nursery owner and being trained in ways of the occult. The matter went to court but the laws around witchcraft are, unsurprisingly, rather vague and open to wide interpretation. This case, however, is not unusual in people with access to children exploiting their position.

What I have got no closer to understanding, however, is what these witchcraft practices actually consist of. People are uncomfortable in discussing it, which I can understand, but the most commonly cited answer is that these young children are taught “bad behaviour” and “bad words”. Well, if bad behaviour is a sufficient condition of witchcraft then the people of Malawi would no doubt suffer a heart attack on entering the average primary 3 class in the UK, wondering at the grasp of Satan on the neck of the developed world.

However apparently after some time of learning ‘bad behaviour’ these kids are eventually taught to kill their mothers or other members of their family. Quite a leap, I should think, from repeating naughty words picked up in the playground to matricide. It confirms my suspicions that many of these stories aren’t really founded or have any substance at all. They seem to be fuelled by fears that are difficult to define; fears of poverty, death, losing children – the precarious nature of balancing lives in poor, rural Malawi.

As if to illustrate Barbara concludes by citing the use of witchcraft and charms by businessmen in Lilongwe to protect themselves and their business and to thwart any looming competition.

“It seems that juju is always used to justify or explain when bad things happen”, I remarked. “Bad things and juju are never far away from each other. So which comes first? Does witchcraft cause bad things, or maybe so many bad things happen make people believe (and use) witchcraft?”

“Now THAT”, she replies, “is a hard question!”

In any case my first knowing encounter with a witch didn’t trouble me too much. I was out of hospital the next day, and it sounds like she’s off to prison. One up to me on that score.

Madmen and Englishmen

Mad people are everywhere in Malawi. They’re generally pretty easy to spot. They usually have excessively ripped brown clothing, if wearing anything at all, and have longer, unruly hair or dreads and facial hair. They’re also usually smack in the middle of the road, totally unaware of the traffic, people or any other hazards around them.

Now, this is not to say there are proportionately more mad people here in Malawi than, say, in the UK. But they are a lot more visible here and that is a reflection on how society supports and manages those who are mad, or deranged, or with psychiatric illnesses or whatever is the current terminology. And a bit of time here, or in Tanzania or plenty of other places prompts a well-needed shake up of our own ingrained assumptions and fears concerning those who we marginalize in society.

Most people will be familiar with the system of community care that is the backbone of social support in many African societies. “Care in the Community” is not something that needs reinvented here because, it is a concept that never went away.

There is a cultural element to this of ‘the extended family’, kinship, blood and belonging, increasingly irrelevant in places like the UK. There is also a pragmatic element in that there is a low level of welfare provision in many of these countries and a need to look after your own (and of course what goes around comes around – your own form of health insurance is helping others). Whatever the root of the differences is, however, it means that those who we marginalize from society in the UK are, for us visitors, strangely visible at the centre of everyday life in Malawi. There is one national institution for those found to be clinically insane, mainly reserved for those of greatest risk to themselves, but outside of that there are no local support networks for people with psychiatric illnesses in Malawi.

Yet, considering the number of such people you see every day the difficulties you encounter are virtually nil. One lady latched on to me for a while and followed me around town. She even followed me into the District Commissioner’s office on the one occasion I was honoured enough for him to give me an audience, to everyone’s confusion but no one’s real inconvenience. I later learnt of her plot to take me to Mozambique, but it was easily foiled when I drove off in my car without her.

There was one recent occasion that really summed up the contrast in my culture and attitudes as compared with those of my Malawian colleagues. Recently at the National Day of Education celebration in the local sports ground one such madman had attached himself to me for the day, following me around and trying to communicate with me. I had been, on reflection, a little rude on my part in minimalising any discussion to avoid encouraging him. At one point a colleague on the main stage spotted me in the crowd and sent someone to get me on stage to the top table. I was a little embarrassed given that I had no formal role in the day but eventually obliged.

Within 10 minutes or so my friend the madman had darted up onto the stage and sat at my feet. I panicked and automatically looked around for support and assistance, presuming he would be removed quite quickly. I remember feeling slight relief when my colleague reached out towards the man. Instead, however, of moving the poor man or shooing him away, he offered him a bottle of coke and some snacks. The man was happy enough, uttered something in way of thanks and eventually moved off the stage of his own accord. I felt very very sheepish indeed but, luckily, I don’t think anyone had known what I was feeling privately and escaped with my pride in tact.

When discussing the differences between Malawian and British attitudes recently with a Malawian friend I remarked on this in particular. Now whilst I am not up to speed by any stretch with developments in psychiatry I do know that you don’t often see people with severe learning disabilities or psychiatric illnesses roaming the street in the UK. And more often than not people with mental disabilities are mainly categorised by and intervened upon based on what threat or burden they cause to the outside world, rather than their existence as people themselves.

“But they have rights!” my friend says. “They have rights to be free and walk around and make choices”. And he wasn’t talking about life long choices about where to be, but the practical freedom to choose every day where they will go and what they will do, no matter how strange these choices may seem to an observer.

That seems pretty simple, but quite a poignant statement from my friend behind the bar.

I listened to a Radio 4 documentary just this week that was comparing psychiatric treatment in an institution in Berkshire as compared to a witchdoctor somewhere in Western Nigeria. The presenter concluded that despite access to some medications and techniques not available in Nigeria the hospital in the UK was forced to overmedicate and constantly restrain its inmates, due to lack of available skilled staff that could avail more progressive solutions to complex conditions. Both countries claimed to have more humane responses to supporting people with these conditions but with different justifications, which resonates with the situation in Malawi. One lacks what might be deemed to be the sophisticated, humane psychiatry techniques but has a supportive and humane environment with which to enact it. The UK might be described as entirely the inverse situation. Yet there doesn’t seem to be much point in being at the forefront of humane and progressive psychiatry if you don’t have a humane and understanding community to support these people or any budget with which to enact them. If forced to choose one environment or the other I’d say most would rather be wandering around town in Mulanje than be lying overmedicated in a bed in Berkshire.

Stone’s Throw In Malawi

I was enjoying a Carlsberg green with a couple of colleagues from the District Education Office recently. We were discussing how dire employment prospects are in Malawi, and the recent stampede of people trying to upgrade and improve their qualifications to get ahead in the better jobs or promotions.

This has partly been a result of the incumbent President’s focus on creating more of a meritocracy in Malawi. His executive has been promoting the need for education at all levels and appointing staff on the basis of qualifications, not on years of service. This has had repercussions at all levels of the system, from girls beginning to strive to stay in school, to their primary school teachers upgrading their own secondary school qualifications (now a requisite A-Level minimum). Higher up the system there are fast-tracking graduates, division managers obtaining their masters, crowned by the presidents’ staff with postgraduate degrees and the President himself with his impressive doctorate.

It is a welcome move from the days of nepotism and cronyism, although it has not come without controversy in Malawi, and lost the President some old time ‘friends’. But the rejuvenated emphasis it has placed on the value of education has been quite significant, and highly progressive.

It is not, however, rosy for everyone, in that the Malawian economy can’t meet the expectations of the hundreds of fresh-faced university and college graduates. The newspapers debate the difficulties around what is truly an employer’s market, in that businesses and NGOs can demand years of relevant work experience and high qualifications. This debate is not a million miles away from what you might find on a UK broadsheet; the difference here is that the often affluent, privileged graduates have extraordinarily high expectations that the world is at their feet and so have further to fall.

Anyway, as ever in Malawi, we did not spend too long on such serious subject matter and my colleague moved on quite quickly. He said whilst numbers of graduates increase in Malawi, they are rocketing elsewhere in Africa, like Nigeria.

“You know Kathy”, he says, “they say when you throw a stone in Nigeria, you will hit a graduate. But if you throw a stone in Zimbabwe, you will hit a fool!”

I laughed along, though previously unaware that Zimbabwe was the butt of jokes in Malawi – clearly the local “paddy” equivalent. I also thought of a few Malawian graduates I’d met recently who weren’t entirely sensible themselves.

“So what happens when you through a stone in Malawi?” I asked.

“You hit an NGO”.